Ubuntu Diaereses

OSX deals with dieraeses wonderfully. Press Alt-u (for Umlaute) then a, for example, and you get ä.

For Ubuntu you can find a list of these kinds of shortcuts here, but first you need to configure your “Compose Key” similar to this:

System -> Preferences -> Keyboard ->Layouts -> Layout Options -> Compose Key Position: Right Alt

DPhil Funding

Well, today’s turning out to be quite a day for announcements.

Last October I was supposed to start my PhD here at Sussex uni, but legal issues meant that wasn’t possible so I started working here temporarily instead. Although the funding won’t be coming from the original source the university have offered me a Graduate Teaching Allowance which requires me to do some teaching but promises the same stipend as I would have got before.

The deal’s not quite as good because the teaching will take some time out of my research, but it could be a good opportunity anyway, especially if I end up continuing in academia afterwards.

Good to know that my future’s settled anyway.

First Paper!

I’ve just received confirmation that my first academic paper has been accepted to a conference in Athens this year, DIMEA 2008: The 3rd ACM International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment & Arts.

The paper’s called “Toward Accessible 3D Virtual Environments for the Blind and Visually Impaired” and is a little project I was working on when I started working as a Research Fellow.

I’m really pleased, but any credit is really due to my co-authors (my PhD supervisor and the director of our lab) for helping me tighten up my ramblings into something vaguely meaningful. I also submitted to another conference a paper based on my MA thesis. I didn’t want any help with that piece and guess what? It got rejected :-p

Phil’s Encyclopedia of Interesting Things

As heard today,

“Tell you what I’m right off girls at the moment.”

“How’d you go about starting an internet cult?”

“I’m really going to have to sort myself out. I’ll do it after lectures.”

Wii Homebrew

I’ve just installed the Homebrew Channel, which lets you run homebrew apps on your Wii.

So using WiiLoad (actually WiiLoadGUIInstaller) I uploaded and played Snake2.

Crap game.

Great homebrew potential!

Important links include GX.h (for hardware accelerated 3D) in libOGC (examples, forum) on devkitPro (PPC Mailing list, Windows Installer, Getting Started Windows, Getting Started Linux, USB Gecko, Debugging, Insight apt-get insight), WiiReleases, SDK, WiiBrew (forum), Linux: (WiiLi Proof of concept, Segher’s patches)

FTPii is really useful for getting apps onto your Wii quickly, though I’ve had some problems with my clients. First of all Cyberduck didn’t display the directory listing (which I am lead to believe is due to my firewall or network config). I’ve now changed to Classic FTP which seems slow, but OneButton works well. The Homebrew Browser sounds interesting but I haven’t tried it yet.

SDExplorer is good for moving things around when the SD card’s in the Wii, but why won’t FTPii let me delete or rename files anyway?

I’ve just uploaded Poker but it looks really ugly too.

Quake’s alright too, though really ugly looking! I’m also not sure about the mouselook control mechanism – if your pointer is in the middle of the screen then you get to target like a mouse, but if you move it a little bit further out then you the camera starts to rotate in that direction. So you get a normal pointer reticule but continuous rotation of your camera until you move the pointer back into the centre. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I’d prefer a bigger deadzone.

If you’re using The Homebrew Channel then you can upload these (missing) files into

/apps/quake/meta.xml

/apps/quake/icon.png

Ubuntu Wii

Following some of the instructions on CWiiD I now have my Wiimote connected to my Ubuntu desktop.

I accidentally followed the instructions for Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) instead of Hardy Heron (8.04) but it seems to have not caused any harm.
Apparently this is all I needed to do,

~/$ sudo apt-get install libcwiid1 lswm wmgui wminput

However there was a problem connecting at first,

~/$ wmgui
Error opening control channel
Error opening control channel

~$ sudo wminput
Put Wiimote in discoverable mode now (press 1+2)...
No wiimotes found
unable to connect

Perhaps it was because there were some other Bluetooth devices in the area (not listed below). Anyway, this seemed to make it work,

~/$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:1E:35:3E:0C:2D       Nintendo RVL-CNT-01

~/$ wmgui 00:1E:35:3E:0C:2D

~/$ wminput 00:1E:35:3E:0C:2D
Put Wiimote in discoverable mode now (press 1+2)...
Ready.

Super High Me

Just watched a cool movie. The premise is similar to Super Size Me – Doug Benson is a stand-up comedian who goes for 30 days without smoking or drinking, then chain smokes weed for the next 30 days: